Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv

Revisioning Moments

By Tali Hatuka

Publication Year: 2010

Violent acts over the past fifteen years have profoundly altered civil rituals, cultural identity, and the meaning of place in Tel Aviv. Three events in particular have shed light on the global rule of urban space in the struggle for territory, resources, and power: the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995 in the city council square; the suicidal bombing at the Dolphinarium Discothèque along the shoreline in 2001; and bombings in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood in 2003. Tali Hatuka uses an interdisciplinary framework of urban theory and sociopolitical theory to shed light on the discourse regarding violent events to include an analysis of the physical space where these events take place. She exposes the complex relationships among local groups, the state, and the city, challenging the national discourse by offering a fresh interpretation of contesting forces and their effect on the urban environment. Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this book is its critical assessment of the current Israeli reality, which is affected by violent events that continually alter the everyday life of its citizens. Although these events have been widely publicized by the media, there is scant literature focusing on their impact on the urban spaces where people live and meet. In addition, Hatuka shows how sociopolitical events become crucial defining moments in contemporary lived experience, allowing us to examine universal questions about the way democracy, ideology, and memory are manifested in the city.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Foreword

Preface

"Violence in Israel-Palestine is a daily reality, an ongoing struggle that expresses grief and causes grief, expresses pain and creates more pain. After the confrontations, we count the dead on both sides as if this were a measurement of sorrow, destruction, or anguish. Israelis and Palestinians always refer to key dates of wars—after 1967, before 1948. War dates, lines on maps, the green, the red, and the blue are all there in the individual and..."

Acknowledgments

"Most of the ideas on the following pages are the fruits of my Ph.D. dissertation at the Technion Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. My first thanks goes to Professor Rachel Kallus, my Ph.D. advisor, for her guidance, support, and wisdom throughout our long journey. I would like to thank the Technion for funding this research throughout my Ph.D. studies and the Sapir Fund and Blaban Glass Research Fund in Israel. The completion of ..."

Introduction

"Sunday, July 11, 2004, 7 a.m. An earsplitting noise rouses me from my bed. Ambulance sirens invade the room. I stand at the window in the commotion, shifting the landscape of the street. Policemen in grey and blue uniforms are running too, trying to disperse the crowd. The buzz of a helicopter adds to the chaos. A policeman is ..."

Chapter 1

"What is the influence of the violent act on the place in which it occurs? How does violence influence perceptions of place? What changes, if any, does it generate? Is violence always an evil that must be eradicated? Addressing these questions will help us understand how violent political acts influence spatial production. Our hypothesis is that violence influences the production of space, but, unlike the Marxist approach that sees a sequence of ..."

Chapter 2

"Malchei Israel Square was constructed in the 1960s as a void surrounded and defined by six-story buildings. The dimensions of the Square are approximately 260 meters north to south, and about 160 meters east to west (see Figures 2.1, 2.2). On the northern edge of the Square stands City Hall, twelve stories high. Constructed on the former Portalis orchard in the Arab village of Summeil, the Square was initially demarcated in Geddes’s plan ..."

Chapter 3

"Jewish demands for autonomy in the early 1920s contributed to the British Mandate’s decision to separate Tel Aviv from Jaffa.1 This decision, officially recognizing Tel Aviv as a separate entity, demarcated the Menshiyeh Quarter between Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a buffer zone with the Hassan Beq Mosque in the center (Map 3.1).2 The establishment of this mosque in 1916 grew out of the decision of the military governor, Hassan Beq, to further develop Jaffa. ..."

Chapter 4

"One Sunday afternoon, at 6:30 p.m., two suicide bombers blew themselves up, one after the other, on two parallel streets by the Central Bus Station. The first exploded in the pedestrian precinct of Neve Shaanan at the corner of Rosh Pina Street. The second exploded on Gedud..."

Conclusion

"I am walking down Eben Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv on a lovely sunny day. It is September 5, 2008, and I am on my way to the City Council to collect some additional archival documents for finalizing my book manuscript. At the entrance stands a weary security guard, who looks past me byt nods for me to stop. Without thinking, I hand him my bag to search. He opens..."

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.